Two years af­ter tip­toe­ing in­to the pro­tein degra­da­tion space with a dis­cov­ery pact cen­tered on neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion, Ab­b­Vie is wad­ing deep­er to ex­plore the more com­mon ap­pli­ca­tions in can­cer and im­muno­log­i­cal dis­eases.

The phar­ma gi­ant is hand­ing Fron­tier Med­i­cines $55 mil­lion up­front to get things start­ed while promis­ing to re­im­burse its pre­clin­i­cal R&D costs. In ad­di­tion to drug can­di­dates that tar­get E3 lig­as­es — a key mem­ber of the body’s nat­ur­al degra­da­tion sys­tem — Fron­tier will al­so be scout­ing small mol­e­cule binders to tar­gets.

At the core of Fron­tier’s plat­form, CEO Chris Var­ma pre­vi­ous­ly ex­plained to End­points News, is some­thing they call chemo­pro­teomics. By ex­am­in­ing tem­po­rary pock­ets in pro­teins, they find new ways to bind tar­gets usu­al­ly con­sid­ered un­drug­gable.

The plat­form has opened up a vast ar­ray of tar­gets, he sug­gest­ed in a state­ment. Team­ing up with Ab­b­Vie will cre­ate a shared pipeline sep­a­rate from its in­ter­nal one, and the big­ger part­ner will be ful­ly re­spon­si­ble for clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment once a pro­gram cross­es the thresh­old.

Fron­tier is based out of South San Fran­cis­co, just min­utes from the R&D hub Ab­b­Vie has blue­print­ed in Oys­ter Point. In ad­di­tion to the up­front, it’s el­i­gi­ble for more than $1 bil­lion in mile­stones, $45 mil­lion of which are lined up for the com­ing year.

Tar­get­ed pro­tein degra­da­tion and chemo­pro­teomics are among the key strate­gic fo­cus ar­eas at Ab­b­Vie, said Jose-Car­los Gutiér­rez-Ramos, VP of dis­cov­ery.

It’s not alone. Sanofi, Roche, Bay­er, Gilead and Ver­tex have all inked their own pro­tein degra­da­tion pacts, high­light­ing a slate of pi­o­neer­ing as well as up-and-com­ing play­ers. While can­cer tar­gets loom large, im­munol­o­gy is al­so emerg­ing as a key field of in­ter­est.

Back in 2018 the com­pa­ny tapped Mis­sion Ther­a­peu­tics to un­earth some deu­biq­ui­ty­lat­ing en­zymes to tack­le Alzheimer’s and Parkin­son’s dis­ease. One year ago it chose a pan­el that’s go­ing in­to fur­ther char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and screen­ing.

While the US biosimilars industry has generally been a disappointment since its inception, with FDA approving 33 biosimilars since 2015, just a fraction of those have immediately followed their approvals with launches. And more than a handful of biosimilars for two of the biggest blockbusters of all time — AbbVie’s Humira and Amgen’s Enbrel — remain approved by FDA but still have not launched because of legal settlements.

Kura Oncology is clear to resume studies for its early-stage leukemia program after the FDA lifted a clinical hold Thursday afternoon.

Regulators had placed the hold on a Phase Ib study of KO-539, an experimental oral treatment for some genetic subsets of acute myeloid leukemia last November after a patient died while taking the drug. Kura expects to begin enrolling patients again imminently, CEO Troy Wilson told Endpoints News.